Wednesday, 12 December 2012

You may have noticed I haven't been blogging
recently (or probably not - my life clearly doesn't revolve around it, I
certainly wouldn't expect yours to...), but I did have an absolutely
fabulous opportunity to visit the House of Bollinger a while back, and
write it up for Civilian (the brand spanking new online luxury lifestyle
magazine started by my good friend Mark C O'Flaherty)...

Friday, 28 September 2012

It’s just coming up to two years since I
started this blog.In fact it will
be two years to the day next Monday since I uploaded my first proper post, the
very first sentence of which ended “as I write
this, it is bleak outside”.And
while, at the precise moment of writing this particular sentence, the sun has
actually come out over Dalston and is shining through my window, bleak is
certainly what the weather has been this past couple of days, and still is over
much of the country.Bleak being
to put it mildly.

That first proper blog post was about wild mushrooms, and what a bumper year it was for
them in 2010.So far in 2012 I
haven’t had an opportunity to go out foraging, but from what I hear this is
certainly not a bumper year, nor anything like one.Like the widespread flooding of the last couple of days -
according to the lady from the Environment Agency I heard interviewed on the
radio earlier today (speaking on the subject of floods, not mushrooms) – this
is almost certainly down to the unusual pattern of this whole year’s weather,
swinging, as it has between drought and deluge (although that’s not
exclusive to this year).

Those same
weather conditions will almost certainly have an effect on the availability
(and therefore, obviously, price) of game birds, which like the birds in my own
back garden, if my own observations are anything to go by, will have struggled
to breed successfully.Although I
have yet to read any reports of the grouse season – which, like wild mushrooms, was a bumper one in 2010,
and again in 2011 – certainly the pre-season forecasts were, at best, mixed.I’ve
not yet been down to Theobalds to check out their prices on grouse this year, but I
doubt they’re knocking them out at a fiver a piece like they were a
couple of Christmases
back, and the cheapest I’ve seen elsewhere
have been the best part of twice that.

So it seems
that autumn’s arrived, but that the prospects of tucking into at least some of
the produce that makes this such a great time of year for a cook – or an eater
– are as bleak as the weather.But
don’t worry – the changing seasons in the kitchen are about how you cook as
much as precisely what you cook.And grouse notwithstanding, there are always bargains to be had.Cheap cuts
of meat are the best for stews,
and the passing of summer sees the return of stewing
season, which is some considerable compensation in my book…

As it happens
though, we have yet to move on to big, hearty, autumnal stews, but we have
started roasting again.Not that
we ever entirely gave it up.It
was still distinctly Indian summery the Sunday before last when we went for a
walk down to the Columbia Road flower market and came back via the Brazilian
butchers on Mare Street. That I’ve long intended to visit.Long intended to but never previously
got round to, mainly through laziness or lack of decisiveness, of course, as in
all things.But at least in part
because of ethical doubts about importingmeat from Brazil.The food
miles for one thing, the destruction of the rain forest for another, what with
its global environmental impact and local genocidal ones.That’s more issues
than I’m necessarily looking for on my plate.So it’s something of an irony, then that I couldn’t help but
feel a pang of disappointment when the Brazilian butcher told me that he
sources his beef from Scotland.

On
reflection though, that is an eminently good thing – not least because Scottish
beef deserves its reputation as among the best in the world.Not, I would add the best.That is an
absurd claim, made by far too many people from far too many parts of the globe,
for any of them to be definitively (or even at all) correct.A bit like the existence of God then –
although at least in the case of beef we can legitimately make an evidence
based although still, obviously, entirely subjective judgment, and declare one
or other type of beef to be our personal favourite.Although I would make two observations about any attempt to
do so: 1. I really don’t see the point; and 2. People making any such claim, in
my experience, almost invariably come from the place of which the claim is
being made.Coincidence?Hmmm….

Anyway, back
to the Brazilian butcher and his Scottish beef.I didn’t ask him where he thought the world’s best beef came
from, but I did have to ask him what some of the cuts of meat he had listed on
his board, or laid on his slab actually were, because although the meat may
have been Scottish, the butchery and some of the terminology, was clearly
wholly Brazilian.The particular
cut I was most interested in was a brick like slab of meat, fat and bone, that
he simply identified as rib, and which definitely counted as one of those
bargains I referred to earlier, coming in at just £3.50 a kilo.

It was a very
similar cut to the more familiar although still not commonly seenBritish or American short
ribs, or the middle rib I wrote about here,
but cut on a different angle, with the ribs passing diagonally rather than
perpendicularly through the joint.Whatever, at that price it was far too much of a bargain to resist, so
we took home the whole slab, which came to almost exactly a kilo.Or about £3.49’s worth.

As it was a
Sunday, we decided a straightforward roast was the obvious way to cook it.And as it was so similar to middle rib,
I took my previous experience with that as the starting point for my method.As I said at the end of my post on
middle rib, the next time I cooked it I would modify my normal roasting method
to reduce the ‘sizzle’ time, either browning the joint more thoroughly than
normal on the stove top before transferring to a cool oven for long gentle roasting,
or browning normally before transferring to a very hot oven but immediately
turning it down.I chose the
latter.

It seemed to work.I preheated the oven to about 250,
whacked in the joint, - first marinaded in a dry rub ofcrushed satr anise, English mustard
powder, salt and pepper, then well browned on all sides and propped up in its
roasting dish by two halves of onion and four quarters of beetroot freshly
pulled from the garden and briefly blanched - closed the oven door and turned
the dial down almost as low as it would go.To around 140 (as I’ve said before, my oven - which I love -
is not the most modern, and has no truck with all this newfangled, Heston
style roasting for 5 hours at 60 degrees malarkey.Not that I’m taking sides, and as
regular readers of this blog will be aware, I’m all in favour of long, slow
cooking.But still, if the process
being described as ‘roasting’ doesn’t involve the exposure of the thing being
cooked to intense heat for at least some of its cooking time, then I’m not
really sure what the word ‘roast’ actually means.Call me old fashioned. And, while I’m on the subject, if your oven’sstuck at 60 degrees for five or six
hours cooking your beef, how are you meant to cook all the other things you
might want to go with your beef?Things like Yorkshire pud or roast potatoes that need a good hot oven?Fine for those with two ovens,
obviously, but how many of us have two ovens?

My method is
of course much less scientific than anything Heston would countenance.I’m really not at all sure how accurate
the temperature settings on my old oven are – although I have an oven
thermometer it is so difficult to read in the gloomy light of the oven that I
never bother - and I know nothing at all about its rate of cooling.All I can tell you is that when I
checked my joint after just half an hour it was looking pretty good, so I took
it out, and closer inspection on the board appeared to confirm that.After a good half an hours resting time,
I carved it – into big chunks, this is not a slicing joint – and indeed it was
just the right shade of pink.

Thursday, 20 September 2012

I guess it’s time to
finish off those plums.You
remember the plums, the ones from my friend Lindsay’s tree?The ones I made into two kinds
of sauce to go with duck (or stir fried pork and beef since), and chutney,
and a tart (that I still have to write up)?And, as I promised, jam?

This was, I have to
admit, the first time I’ve ever made jam, so I won’t pretend to be an expert,
but will instead point you in the direction of someone who seems to be.I did a fair bit of research, and
pretty much all the recipes I found were, broadly speaking, much the same - I settled
on the Cottage
Smallholder’s version though because I liked both the simplicity of the
recipe itself and the clarity of its description.Also because it had a variation specifically for ‘barely
ripe’ plums, which was exactly what I was working with.And although the plums they were
talking about were apparently Wild Plums, their picture of them did look just
like mine (stop sniggering at the back there…)

I won’t bother
reproducing the recipe here - just click on the link,
- as I followed it pretty much line for line, and I wouldn’t want to even give
the impression that I was claiming any kind of authorship.The one twist of my own that I added on
this occasion was throwing in a single pod of star anise and a two inch length
of cinnamon stick, for an added hint of spice.By and large, I’d have to say it wasn’t at all bad for a
first attempt at jam making - coming out as it did, above all, really plummy - but there are a few things I’d experiment with
changing next time.

Firstly, the amount of
sugar used.This was pretty
standard in all the recipes I found, at equal weights of fruit and sugar.In fact I used rather lower proportion of
sugar than that, two 1 kilo bags of regular granulated for 2.3 kg of
plums.Still the finished jam was
a little bit on the sweet side for my – and particularly Becca’s tastes.Next time I’ll reduce the sugar content
even further, perhaps as far as two parts sugar to 3 of fruit (which would have
been about 1.5kg of sugar in this case).I’ll also add the juice, and maybe the zest, of a lemon or two, just for
added zing and a touch of tartness.

I used regular sugar
rather than preserving sugar and followed the tip that appears in the comments
section below the recipe for adding pectin by cracking a handful of plum stones
and tying them up in a muslin bag which you then drop in the pan with the plums
for the natural pectin in the plum stone kernels to act as the setting
agent.That was if anything too
successful – personally I feel home made jam should be distinctly runny, mine
is set firm.I used about a dozen
cracked stones in my muslin bag.Next time I’d make it a half dozen.

Speaking of setting,
the cold plate trick for testing the setting point of jams and jellies has
never worked for me.This is where
you put a plate in the fridge and test for setting by drop a blob of your
boiling jam/jelly onto the cold plate, put it back in the fridge for a minute
or so, then prod it with your finger.If set the surface of your blob should wrinkle. I have always just ended up with two
cold plates covered in sticky smears, not a sign of a wrinkle, and eventually
just gone with gut instinct that if the jam/jelly hasn’t been boiling long
enough and hard enough to set now, then it never will.And if anything, every time my
jam/jelly has, if anything come out erring on the side of oversetting.My medlar
jelly in particular – delicious though it was (and still is, just one jar
left now…) – could have made a powerball.I don’t know if this indicates that my fridge just doesn’t get as cold as
it claims to, but I don’t think so – it seems satisfactorily chilly in every
other regard.Maybe I should just
get myself a jam thermometer.Or
trust to instinct, like I do with most other aspects of cooking…

One last point – as I
said, one of the key things that attracted me to the Cottage
Smallholder’s recipe was that it seemed simple.And it was.The other impression I got from reading it was that – apart from the
steeping of the fruit in sugar over night – it was pretty quick.It wasn’t.The only mention of timing in the recipe is 8-10 minutes of
continued rapid boiling, rather skipping over the ‘bring to the boil’ bit.Well, in my experience, bringing over
4kg of combined fruit and sugar to the boil in the first place takes a long
time.A really long time.After all, you don’t want to turn your
biggest, fiercest gas burner on full under the pan, because that’ll just burn
the fruit and sugar at the bottom before the heats even got to the top.And then, the recipe says, once the
jam’s reached setting point, at that stage you just carefully remove the plum
stones with a slotted spoon as they float to the surface, as if that was the
work of a moment.Again, it’s
not.When you’re working with
2.3kg of small plums, that’s a good twenty minutes worth of prodding and poking
(because my plum stones, at least, weren’t cooperative enough to just ‘float up
to the surface’) and scooping on it’s own.So I’d recommend starting that process before you’re even
wondering whether or not your jam’s reached setting point.All in all, I can tell from the timestamps
on the photos I took, it was a full three hours from putting the sugar and
fruit into the pan to putting lids on jars of jam.Working with smaller quantities, scooping stones sooner and
more efficiently, and having more confidence in your gut telling you that
setting point’s been reached even if your cold plate isn’t wrinkling will reduce
that time considerably, but still.Leave yourself a full morning (or afternoon or evening).

And that just leaves the tart. But in the mean time, here's a tasty bit of crumpet (with a dollop of plum jam)...

Monday, 17 September 2012

The last couple of
posts have been on stuff to do with plums, lots of plums (and there’s still jam
and tart to come…), but I wouldn’t want you to go away with the idea that this
blog is all, and only, about plums these days.Of course it’s not.And of course this time of year, the end of the summer and beginning of
autumn, is famously the most abundant time ofyear for all sorts of fruit and veg – not to mention wild mushrooms and
game.

While it may not be a
common feature of the traditional English harvest festival, one of the
conspicuous highlights of this time of year round here – here being Dalston,
with its many Turkish shops, - is the abundance, and perfect plump ripeness, of
fresh figs.They are, it’s true,
available through much of the rest of the year too, these days, but between now
and Christmas is the only time they are ever worth buying, and right about this
time, from mid August and throughout September, is best of all. And one of the things that reminds me to be thankful that we live in Dalston,
with its many Turkish shops, in any one of which you can buy four figs for a pound. A rather better deal than the in no way superior looking figs I came across in Fortnum and Masons the other day - having an hour to kill in Piccadilly - being sold for a pound fifty a piece (or four for six pounds).

A perfectly ripe fig
is of course, a beautiful and lusciously tempting thing, with its velveteen
soft, purple skin and yielding, crimson insides.It’s easy to see why it has such strong associations with
decadence and, mainly, sex.Although whether or not the experience of eating one is ever actually
erotic, I’m not so sure.Speaking
for myself, of course.Clearly one
of the defining features of eroticism is that every individual finds it where
they will, and there’s no point trying to say they’re wrong.If a fig turns you on – or wearing a
ball gag or nappy for that matter – who am I to argue that there’s nothing
erotic about it.Speaking for
myself, as I am, I’d say pretty much anything loses its erotic potential once
that relentless enthusiast for all things erotic - and, particularly, symbolic
– DH
Lawrence has had done with it…

Like plums, figs are
used as direct slang for intimate body parts.Unlike plums, or anything else I can think of, for that
matter, figs have been commonly used as slang for both male and female parts,
which is a bit weird but nowhere near as weird as the sex life of the fig
itself – if one can use the term sex life for the reproductive mechanism of a
plant.The fruit is in fact an
inverted flower, which depends on a particular kind of wasp (of which there is
a matching species for each distinct species of fig, and for whom the
dependency is mutual) to pollinate it, and within which the female wasp, having
pollinated it and laid her eggs within it, dies, and is consumed.It seems to me that once you know that,
any erotic charge that the fig still holds is of a pretty dark, one might say Cronenbergian hue…

Nevertheless, and
putting to the back of your mind that every time you eat a fig you’re eating a
dead wasp mother (but don’t worry, the lifecycles
of the two organisms are, thankfully, synchronised in such a way that there
will be no wasp larvae present in any edible fig), a perfectly ripe fig is
not only a beautiful and tempting thing, but a sublimely delicious one.Eat them on their own, with a drizzle
of honey or maple syrup.Or, as I
did recently, make a salad of quartered figs, wedges of peach and shredded
parma or Serrano ham.Again, a
light drizzle of maple syrup to dress it, and you have yourself a lusciously
decadent and delicious – if not downright erotic – lunch , or better still,
breakfast, dish.

Thursday, 6 September 2012

Even after having had
two goes at making a sauce for a pair of roasted duck breasts, that still left
a lot of plums to get through.My
plan for the greenest of them had always been chutney.Not unlike the similarly green tomato
chutney that was the subject of one of my very first posts on this blog.The technique was pretty much exactly
as described for that, although I left out the turmeric, which didn’t really
seem a necessary or appropriate complement to the plums.I also notice that in the two years (two years!) since I wrote that post I
have become rather more of a purist in the spice toasting department.I now toast the whole seeds in the dry
pan prior to pounding them to a powder with pestle and mortar, rather than vice
versa.How much difference that
makes to the flavour of the finished dish I couldn’t really say – marginal
would probably be about right, but it does reduce the chances of over toasting,
i.e. burning, the spices and ending up with something acrid and bitter rather
than warmly flavour enhancing.It’s also possible that it – again marginally – makes the
pestle&mortaring easier, so given that it’s not actually any more hassle (although
it does, admittedly, take a minute or two longer) you really may as well.It does slightly change the order of
events – as before, I now start by toasting spice seeds, but then they’re
removed to be pounded, and the chutney cooking itself starts with the garlic,
chilli and onions softening gently in oil - in the same pan, you may as well
make use of any residual flavour the spice toasting as left behind.Then I add the powdered spices to the
onion as it cooks.It’s not a
radical change.

Stone and quarter the
plums; peel and dice the onions small; finely slice the garlic and chilli (as
usual I’m leaving quantities of those to you and your taste – I use
plenty).

Soften the onion,
garlic and chilli in a little oil (I used olive, but sunflower, groundnut etc
is fine), sprinkle with the spices, add the plums and cook till starting to
soften, then add the raisins.Cook
a little more and add the vinegar.Keep cooking till the consistency’s suitably gloopy and the vinegar’s
eye-watering punch has mellowed.Spoon into sterilised jars.Serve with tangy cheddar cheese (assuming you don’t have a dairy allergy
– sorry Becca) or a pork pie.

Ah.Pork pies.I’ve said
it before and I’ll no doubt say it again:I do like a pork pie.I’ve also said before that I was definitely going to make one myself,
one day.That day has yet to
come.I do now, though, have the
good fortune to find myself working a day or two a week down at Borough Market – probably London’s
(and presumably the UK’s) biggest and best food market – as part of my day (or
more often evening) job for Borough
Wines.Our stall is almost
directly opposite Mrs King’s pie stall, and Mrs King, it has to be said, does
make exceedingly good pies.They
are that rare thing these days – a pork pie that actually tastes of pork.And with proper crispy, crumbly pastry,
and jelly and everything.Mrs
King’s pies inspire me to make my own, while simultaneously raising the
question ‘why bother?’.So far, I
admit, the question comfortably trumps the inspiration…

Tuesday, 4 September 2012

Last week my good friend
Lindsay sent a plea for help.The
plum tree in her back garden was so overladen with fruit that it represented a
danger to itself and others, and was in need of a radical plum-ectomy.Of course I was happy to help out.We spent a thoroughly entertaining
couple of hours teetering on precariously propped ladders, poking at out of
reach branches with long sticks, and showering small children with plums of
every stage of development from rock hard to mouldering mush.At the end of the morning I came home
with three large bags, filled with plums of all stages of development save the
last.

The contents of the
three bags had been sorted, into thoroughly unripe, not quite ripe, and ripe
and ready to eat.The latter went
straight into the fruit bowl, of course; the others, of each of which there was
a far greater quantity, demanded rather more thought.Not that it really took a huge amount of either effort or
intelligence to come up with the following thoughts:chutney; jam; tart and sauce.

And once I’d come up
with plum sauce, it was scarcely an intuitive leap of genius to get to roast
duck, either, and as luck would have it they happen to have duck breasts at
half price in Sainsburys at the moment.Which was, as the
man from The Fast Show would say, nice.

Roast duck breasts,
with or without a plum sauce is one of those things that I couldn’t believe
that I hadn’t written up here already – to the extent that I did several
searches through my blog history, before being entirely convinced.Mainly because a roast duck breast is
one of those things – not unlike a pork tenderloin fillet, and for similar
reasons – that is so quick and easy to do you can knock it together on a
weekday evening after getting home from work, and yet produces a meal that is
not only delicious, but feels like a rather luxurious treat.And when the duck breasts themselves
are half price – which they do quite often seem to be, at our local Sainsburys
at least - it’s not too pricey either.Not cheap, but, I think, worth it in a way that buying individual
chicken breasts, never, ever is.Not least because individual chicken breasts are, frankly, pretty
uninspiring slabs of meat, so much less tasty, or versatile, than the same
chicken’s own very much cheaper legs, while a duck breast, with its luscious
layer of fat and crispable skin, really is a prime cut.

Another advantage of
the roast duck breast - and, again something it shares with the pork tenderloin
– although not relevant on this particular occasion, is that it’s something
that’s very easily scale-able.It
really is one of those few things that’s as do-able for two as it is for twenty
– and it’s scarcely more work for a larger number, it’s just a matter of the
size of your pan/s.

Here and now though,
it was just a dinner for two.Which obviously meant that the sauce for it wasn’t going to make much of
a dent in our current glut of plums, but never mind.Perhaps in acknowledgement of that fact, I ended up making
not one, but two plum sauces to go with my duck, thereby getting through twice
the number of plums.I say
perhaps, but that’s a lie – the truth is that I just wasn’t happy with the
first sauce.Not that there was
anything wrong with it, as a sauce, it just wasn’t right for the dish I had in
mind, being too intense and concentrated.It would have smothered the duck.So I made a lighter, looser sauce – basically a compote - to go over the
duck, and served the first sauce on the side like a ketchup.

Spicy plum ketchup:

6-8 plums

1 small onion (or
shallot)

chilli

garlic

pomegranate molasses

good red wine or
sherry vinegar

1/2 star anise

Salt, pepper

I finely chopped the
onion, a clove of garlic and about a little fingernail’s worth of fresh chilli
and put them, with a good slug of olive oil, in a small saucepan over a lowish
heat.Using a pestle and mortar a
crushed a handful of black peppercorns, the star anise and a pinch of rock salt
into powder and sprinkled it in with the onion.While the onion was softening, I took a handful of plums –
choosing a pretty random mix of ripenesses - halved and stoned them before
adding to the pan once the onion was soft and translucent.I allowed them to cook for about 10-15
minutes, till softening but still holding their shape, then added a good dash
of the pomegranate and vinegar – probably about a dessertspoon of each.Then I allowed the pan to simmer
gently, for about another 15 minutes or so, till the liquid was reduced by
maybe as much as a third, and the vinegar had lost its sting.

Then I checked for seasoning.It had plenty, along with the tang of
the vinegar, the sweetness of plums and pomegranate and a distinct hit of
chilli heat.That was the point
that I decided that my original plan, to coat the duck breasts in this sauce,
might need to be rethought.This
sauce was good, but it was not the right sauce - there was just a bit too much
going on.

Fortunately, I’d been
making the sauce in advance, so it was no problem just to set the pan aside for
the sauce to cool, before blitzing it down to ketchup
consistency - about 200ml worth, and a lovely, purpley/chocolatey colour - for a dipping sauce, leaving plenty of time to make up another
sauce to pour over the duck.A
very quick, easy and tasty sauce, but nevertheless, one that wouldn’t
overwhelm the duck.

Very mildly spicy
plum compote:

6-8 plums

Star anise

Citrus zest (Satsuma
and lemon in this case, or orange)

Splash of gin

Pinch of mixed spice

Again, I picked a
handful of plums of varying degrees of ripeness and halved and stoned
them.I put them in a pan with
just a smear of olive oil in the bottom to discourage sticking and gently
started to cook them.Meanwhile I
used a veg peeler to shave a couple of good strips of zest each from a lemon
and a Satsuma and threw those into the pan, along with the juice squeezed from
half the lemon.I sprinkled the
plums with just a pinch of the spice mix I’d prepared for makingthe plum chutney I’ll write up in my
next post, but which consisted of salt, pepper and toasted fennel, coriander,
cumin and mustard seeds, all crushed to a fine powder with pestle and mortar –
allspice, cloves and cinnamon could go in there too, if you want, or indeed
instead, but the key thing, rather than the specific spices used in this
instance, was to keep the spicing light.Then I added a good slug of gin and let everything cook together gently
until the plums were soft but still plum shaped, and the gin and juices had
reduced to a nice light syrup – literally no more than 10-15 minutes.And that was that.All ready to be spooned over the duck.

Roast duck breasts

Duck Breasts

Salt, pepper, star
anise

Score the skin of the
duck breasts, trying not toslice
right through the fat to the flesh below (but it’s not a disaster if the odd
score does go all the way through.Using a pestle and mortar, pound together a good pinch of rocksalt, a
couple of dozen or so peppercorns and a star anise, and rub the resulting
powder into the scored skin side of the breasts, rubbing any excess into the
flesh side for good measure.

Get a metal handled
(or otherwise oven proof) frying pan good and hot and sear the breasts, skin
side down until crusted a dark golden brown.Then turn the breasts in the pan and transer, skin side now
up, to the oven, preheated to 180-200.Roast for 10-12 minutes depending on the thickness of the breasts and
the rareness you like.Maybe as
much as 15 minutes if you or your guests are squeamish about pink running
juices.Neither Becca nor I are
(squeamish that is), you probably won’t be surprised to hear, but, unlike many alleged experts, I
wouldn’t presume to sneer at anyone who preferred their duck, lamb or steak
well done.Different strokes and
all that.I was at a restaurant
once with a work colleague who sent her lamb chops back three times to get it
cooked beyond pink – and while I happen to share the chef’s opinion on the
optimum degree of doneness for a lamb cutlet, I couldn’t understand his (or her
– but I bet it was a him) dogged refusal to cook it any discernable degree
further to suit the tastes of a paying customer.That’s just arrogant and rude.

After taking the duck
breasts out of the oven leave to rest for a good ten to fifteen minutes (you
could even make the second plum sauce while the meat relaxes) before
serving.I like to slice them
before plating up, but by all means serve them whole if you prefer (different
strokes etc).I spooned the
compote over the sliced breasts and then I’m afraid I drizzled the spicy plum ketchup over and around the meat.Given my time again I’d just spoon a
single big blob onto the side of the plate like proper ketchup.

As the oven was on
anyway I roasted up some potato, celery carrots and four giant cloves of
garlic, with a handful of spring onions thrown into the roasting dish when I
opened the oven to remove the duck.

The rest of the spicy plum ketchup - that which did not get drizzled (sorry) - is in a pot in the fridge. It's already made an excellent dipping sauce for a delicious Vietnamese style pork belly stir fry that Becca made.

There was also a plum
tart for dessert, but I’ll write that up in a separate post.

Wednesday, 22 August 2012

Having spent so much
of this year having a bit of a moan about the weather, I feel rather bad about
having had nothing to say (on the blog at least) since the summer came good,
but what with a week’s holiday, the Olympics
and starting a new job since last I
posted, I don’t seem to have much time to cook, let alone write it up.I certainly haven’t been cooking very
much that’s new, and although that makes for less interesting blogging, it
really isn’t a problem.Innovation
is all very well, and there’s always a place, indeed a need, for it – but old
favourites are good too.After
all, revered as the likes of Ferran
Adria and Rene
Redzepi are, there’s nothing the world of foodiness loves more than
culinary tradition (to the point of tedious dogma, at times, it
must be said, but still…), and you simply wouldn’t get culinary tradition without
the repetition of old favourites.Where would we be if every Greek grandma felt under pressure to deconstruct
her Kleftiko,
if every Marsellaise fishwife couldn’t serve up a fish stew because the family
have had bouillabaisse
before.Sorry, I know I’ve said all
this before too, but it is, appropriately enough, an old favourite topic of
mine…

Becca and I had dinner
in the garden earlier this week – the first time, I think, that we’ve eaten al
fresco at home this year.I served
up a variation on a dish so old and favourite that I’ve already written up two
distinct versions of it before – once with asparagus,
once with beans
and beetroot.I make no
apologies for that, because the steak salad is so good on so many levels.Three at least: It’s a great way to
make dense red meat into a light summery meal; it makes a little meat go a long
way; and it’s ideally made with those lesser known - every bit as tasty, but
mysteriously much cheaper than the regular - cuts of steak, known
variously as flank, feather, skirt,
hanger
or butcher’s steak, so it’s doubly cheap.Oh, and it’s thoroughly delicious.

This version was as
simple as can be – another great reason for doing it. And quick, too – and the last
thing you want to be doing on those rare occasions we have the chance to eat
out in the garden in this country is spend hours sweating away in the kitchen,
pushing your culinary envelope.Just
new potatoes and green beans, tossed in a mustardy, lemony vinaigrette, with a
few fine shavings of garlic and fresh chilli, fennel fronds and celery leaves,
with a 330g feather steak (a whole £3.30’s worth for the two of us), salted,
peppered, seared and rested, then sliced into thin strips and laid over the
top.Served with a crunchy salad
of celery, tomato, cucumber and fennel.Eaten outside in the last of the evening sunshine with a chilled bottle
of light
and fruity red.

Try as I might, I
really can’t imagine I’m likely to get bored of that any time soon…

Thursday, 26 July 2012

Summer seems to have
arrived at last, at least it has here in London – just
in time for the Olympics - and I find myself committed to writing up a
recipe for stew. Bleedin’
typical. Still, as stews go, it’s
pretty light and summery, and with it’s combination of paprika dusted chicken
livers and butter beans it has a distinct hint of Spain about it too, which
works for me any time of year, but summer and Spain do go together in my mind
(even if the best times to actually go there are undoubtedly spring
and autumn).

In my previous
post on chicken livers I’d described dusting the trimmed livers in flour
seasoned with salt, pepper and plenty of paprika (hot or sweet, the choice is
yours, personally I switch randomly entirely dependent on mood or mere whim),
and frying them till crisp and just starting to char at the edges on the
outside, still delicately pink and tender on the inside, then using half the
batch in a salad, and setting half aside in a bowl in the fridge to use in a
stew for the next day. Overlooking
the fact that that I posted that over a week ago, imagine that it is now that
‘next day’, and time for chicken liver stew. Which really couldn’t be quicker, easier, or much more
delicious.

First take the bowl of
chicken livers out of the fridge, along with a few rashers of streaky bacon (or
pancetta) – a couple per person.
You’ll also need onions, mushrooms and a tin of beans – butter beans are
my preference, for size, flavour, consistency, and a properly Spanish feel, but
cannellini are a perfectly good substitute. Or chickpeas
work well too, and bring a different, perhaps more Moorish character to the
dish. If you want to throw in red
pepper, fennel, or celery, as well as the onion, then go ahead – but the
combination of liver bacon and onions is so good, and so classic, I tend to
keep it pretty simple. A little
garlic and a bit of fresh chilli, a splash or two of wine and/or stock,
seasoning and herbs, and that’s it.

Just start by frying
your bacon, chopped to roughly postage stamp sized pieces, then add the onions
with fine sliced garlic and fresh chilli (entirely optional and variable on
whether you dusted in hot or sweet paprika) and hard herbs – thyme, and ideally
a few sage leaves (sage goes wonderfully with all forms of liver), cook till
softening, then add the mushrooms.
Cook a couple of minutes more, till the mushrooms are just coloured,
then tip in your beans. Add a
glass of wine and a ladle or two of chicken stock (or all wine if you have no
stock to hand, or vice versa – although that seems less likely, somehow…),
cover the pan and simmer it all together gently till the onions are fully soft
and the beans have just a little bite left in them. Then add your chicken livers and basically just warm them
through. Scatter with fresh
parsley. It’s all done in about 20
minutes.

Serve just with good
bread and a salad on a summery day, or with mash, or maybe colcannon if the
weather calls for more hearty, comforty sort of eating.

Tuesday, 24 July 2012

Me, communing with ducks. A bit like Eduardo Sousa (but rest assured none of the ducks in this picture were subsequently killed for their livers)

When I was searching
out items to link to on my last post I came across a couple of things that got me thinking. Thinking among other things that the issues they raised merited rather more than just being hidden away behind embedded links, that might or might not be
clicked on. So, rather than just posting the links and passing on, and at the risk of going back over ground that you may well have covered yourself having clicked on my previous post, here are a few of my thoughts prompted by two of those linked items:

The first was this one, which I came across while searching for
articles on the ethics of foie gras production, that would illuminate the issue
without being too revolting – after all, I was seeking to turn people on to the
delights of chicken livers, not put them off eating all together. What I hadn’t been expecting to come across was something
that made me think again about foie gras, and make me really want to try some –
of admittedly a very rare and no doubt terrifyingly expensive kind (there is no
indication of how and where you might be able to purchase it on the Pateria de Sousa website, let alone a pricelist).
Even if you are – not unreasonably - unwilling to have your views on
foie gras modified by the example of a product you have next to no chance of
ever sampling, I would still urge you to click on the link and check out Dan Barber’s “foie gras parable” – because not only is it an extraordinary and
intriguing tale, entertainingly told, I have to admit that by the end I also found
it genuinely moving and, although it’s a word I’m not generally wont to use,
actually inspiring. And not just
in the sense that it inspired me to think again about foie gras in particular,
but for what it has to say more generally about animal welfare in farming, and
even food production as a whole.

If, of all things,
foie gras can be produced with such respect for the welfare of – even love for –
the geese involved, and for the environment in which they, and the farmer,
live, then surely there is hope for us all. And I’m not just talking about those who hanker for guilt
free foie gras, or even just about those of us who do genuinely care
about the ethics of food production, but ultimately, actually, everyone, because we
all depend on the farming industry to produce our food. Even those very few
people among us who don’t directly, who manage to be 100% self sufficient, do still rely on an
environment profoundly affected by the farming industry.

Further, the fact that
the foie gras produced in this way is so good, not in spite of the focus of
attention being on the welfare of the goose and it’s environment, but as a
direct result of it, is a truly beautiful thing. An inspiring thing.
And, I think, the thing that turns the story into a parable.

Now I’m not so naïve
to believe that Eduardo Sousa’s methods can be applied across world farming; that
every livestock farmer will ever have either the time or the inclination to lie
down with his flocks and whisper sweet nothings in their ears; that the lives
of all domesticated animals reared for meat can be made so attractive that wild
members of their species voluntarily come and join them. Nor am I likely to be convinced that foie
gras, or any other part of the goose for that matter, produced by his methods
is ever going to be anything other than a prohibitively expensive luxury,
available only to a very few. But
still, there are wider reaching lessons to be drawn from Dan Barber’s parable,
lessons that apply to all animal husbandry, to all farming.

There’s even a lesson
that applies more generally than that: a lesson about ethics generally, or
perhaps more particularly about how we view the world. Too many people, too much of the time
tend to reduce all issues to black/white; right/wrong. The real world is more complex than
that, and if an issue as apparently black and white as the ethics of foie gras
production (foie gras: clearly bad, on animal welfare grounds) can turn out to have such a massive grey
area (some foie gras, it turns out: not just good, but the highest welfare meat
product you’re ever likely to encounter…) then what does that tell us about all
the other, more obviously fuzzy, areas of ethical debate, that people still
tend to polarise? Don’t polarise,
that’s what – think, and think again. Just like the veal issue.

The other link that
got me thinking was this one, about the impact of asparagus farming for overseas
markets in Peru. It seems our
taste for out of season asparagus is, literally, draining Peru dry. Which just goes to illustrate that the
current trend for seasonality and local produce is based on more than foodie faddism
(which is not to claim that all its proponents are more than mere
foodie faddists). Although, in
light of my comments in the paragraph above, one does also have to take into
account the benefits of $450 million annual export revenue for a country as
poor as Peru, and the 10,000 jobs the asparagus industry has created in one of
the very poorest parts of that poor country. See, it can be tricky, living in the grey areas - so I’ll
leave it entirely up to you whether or not to purchase Peruvian asparagus from
your local mega mart. On balance,
personally, I won’t be.

I did say I’d be
writing up more things to do with chicken liver on my next post – that’ll have
to wait. In the mean time, here’s
a picture to keep you going…

Wednesday, 11 July 2012

A month and more has
passed since last
I posted, making June 2012 the first month since I started this blog to
come and go without a single word from me.There’s no obvious excuse: yes, I’ve been busy, but I’ve
been busy before, and I’m sure many others out there in the ‘sphere have been
busier and still managed to blog regularly.I think the problem has been, as much as a lack of time, a
lack of inspiration – I do try to keep my posts seasonal, and the past month
has been so depressingly
unseasonal it’s been hard to come up with anything appropriate, either to
write about, or for dinner for that matter.

Nevertheless, I must
try – and do – better.And will
promise to at least make an effort not to go on too tediously about the bloody
weather.Apologies in advance for
my inevitable failure on that particular score.Bloody
weather, blah, blah…

My last post featured
the barbeque,
and I’m somewhat torn between picking up where I left off in a - dare I say
characteristically British? - spirit of bugger
the weather, and not wishing to do anything that’s only going to further
rub in the absence of suitable barbequing conditions - given that chances are
that as you read this it’ll be all grey, gloomy and distinctly soggy outside,
as indeed it is as I write. This
dilemma though is neatly resolved by a scan through my recently accumulated
food pics which reveals that the few times this year I’ve had the means, motive
and opportunity to throw together something explicitly summery, either on the
barbeque or not, it has inevitably featured asparagus.And as we are at best, in the dying if
not already dead days of this year’s asparagus season (I’m talking British
asparagus here, obviously – it seems to be Peruvian asparagus season all year
round – how?
– but that doesn’t count) then any write ups of those meals will have to wait
till next spring.In the mean
time, I guess I’ll stick to things that are sort of a bit summery, but also
quite hearty and warming.

Like a warm chicken
liver salad, for instance.

Now I love chicken
livers.Properly, seriously, love
them.To the extent that it is an
enduring mystery to me how come they’ve not featured more heavily on this blog
– or indeed (hardly, having been mentioned
only in passing) at all.Maybe
it’s because whenever we do have them I’m always in too much of a hurry to eat
them to take any decent pictures – which might or might not explain the quality
of the pictures accompanying this particular post (or my blog in general, come
to mention it…).

Anyway, finally, let’s
talk about chicken livers: not only are they utterly delicious, they are cheap,
versatile, and both quick and very simple to prepare.What’s not to like?When considering poultry livers considered to be delicacies, most
people’s minds will turn automatically to foie gras, but without even
considering the ethics
of its production, for me the fabulous richness that is the basis of foie
gras’ appeal, is also its limiting factor, both in terms of its moreishness
(perhaps just as well considering its exorbitant price) and perhaps more
significantly its versatility.And
for those reasons alone – again without factoring in ethics, or cost – if forced
to choose, I’d take chicken livers over foie gras, without any real sense of a
dilemma.You wouldn’t actually
have to force me.Add ethics to
the equation, not to mention relative costs, and you’d have pretty much the
dictionary definition of a ‘no brainer’ (although if I were ever to be offered
any of the foie gras Dan
Barber talks about rather marvellously here it might just change my mind…).

Also, and sorry to
mention it again, but they’re just the thing for this dubiously summery and
thoroughly unpredictable weather we’ve been having, being the perfect basis of
a main course salad, either hot or cold, or a light and quick stew.Or of course you could use them to make
a pate (which given the soft, buttery texture they start off with could really
hardly be easier, being, at its simplest just a question of mashing them with a
fork) which would be ideal for taking on a picnic – if anyone’s been on one of
those this year…

Pretty much whatever
I’m going to end up doing with them, I start off by preparing them in the same
way, which I have to admit is another appealing thing about them.This is the method I devised (if that’s
not too grand a word) to recreate at home the meze dish served at the Real
Greek years ago (and I daresay to this day, but since it became a chain, no doubt not to the
same delicious effect).This is
simply to dust the livers in flour seasoned with salt, pepper and paprika (use
the sweet, or smoked/hot entirely depending on personal taste, or mood – I
generally favour sweet so as not to overpower the delicate flavour of the
livers, but sometimes feel in the mood for a little more spice) and fry quickly
till the outsides have gained a lightly crunchy crust and the insides are still
just pink.The only trick to any
of this is trimming the livers of any stringy bits of sinew, and, above all, to
make sure you’ve properly drained them of any of the blood and general gloop
they come packed with.You want
them dusted in flour before frying, not coated in a gluey paste.The whole process takes about ten
minutes including no more than a couple of minutes a side frying time, and will
have prepared enough livers for a couple of main meals for the two of us, so
normally when I take the livers out of the pan I’ll set half aside to cool
before being put in the fridge for tomorrow, half to be used for tonight.

And normally the first
night’s dish is a salad.The
simplest thing to do of course is just throw the livers together with a few
leaves – chicory has a particular affinity, something to do with the contrast
of the bitterness and crunch of the leaves with the sweet softness of the
livers, I guess – but I usually include a couple of other things that just go
so well with the livers it seems a criminal waste not to: pretty much always
shredded bacon, because I always have bacon on hand (and why wouldn’t you?); very
often avocado, depending on whether we have one that’s anything remotely like
ripe; occasionally some black pudding or
morcilla.

Usually I’ll mix the
warm livers (and bacon) with cold leaves, dress with a sweetish sherry vinegar
vinaigrette, and serve with sautéed potatoes on the side, but if the evening’s
a particularly bleak disappointment – or you’re doing this at another time of
year when chilly evenings are more seasonal – then you can obviously make the
whole thing a hot salad by sautéing your leaves too – another thing chicory has
a particular affinity for, although gem hearts are good too, just split
lengthways and cooked in a lightly olive oiled pan with the cut surfaces down
till they start to caramelise.If
it’s a hot salad, I’ll generally just toss it all together, potatoes and all.

The following night
I’ll generally turn the remaining livers into a stew: I’ll write that up in
more detail in my next post.

Labels

About Me

I am a self taught cook who honed my skills professionally under Mark Hix at the Rivington Bar & Grill in Shoreditch, before realising that the life of a restaurant chef is a life fit only for crazy people. I like to think I’m not crazy, so now I cook mainly for myself and my girlfriend Becca. I am still available for hire, though: if you might be interested, check out my website at sebastianroach.com.
This blog is a vehicle for my general food related musings and the odd restaurant review, mainly though, it’s an account of the food I cook at home. I like to keep it simple, but make it good. Simple, good and mostly dairy free, because Becca is sadly allergic, which is a real shame, because she would surely love cheese. An accidental consequence of that is that this blog stands as proof that dietary restrictions don’t need to mean restricted flavour. I hope so, anyway, but that’s not the main point. The main point is to share my love of good food, and show that eating well can be, well, simple.
Cheers.